Towards A Typology of Imperative Interjections: ‘Take It!’ In The Caucasus 1

This paper presents a first typological study of a particular type of imperative interjections, namely interjections with the meaning ‘here, take it!’ used by a speaker when they ask the addressee to take something from the speaker's hands (often combined with a gesture of giving). The sample of languages is both geographically and genealogically restricted and includes only the languages spoken in the Caucasus, namely those belonging to the three indigenous Caucasian language families (Nakh‐Daghestanian, West Caucasian and Kartvelian) as well as a few Turkic and Indo‐European languages of the area. It is shown that dedicated imperative interjections with the meaning ‘here, take it!’ exist in the majority of the languages of the sample. With respect to their phonological shape, they can be subsumed under three broad types. The analysis of the morphosyntactic behaviour of ‘here, take it!’‐interjections demonstrates that, in some languages, they combine with certain inflectional or derivational affixes and can become part of compound verbs. Clauses with the interjections ‘here, take it!’ often include syntactic arguments, namely direct objects and recipients. A range of ‘extended’ uses of the interjections ‘here, take it!’ can be found in spontaneous discourse, including signalling of the speaker's emotional reaction.